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States pressure Obama to find $82 billion for federal superstorm relief

Thursday, December 6, 2012 by:max.kranl@chron.com (Max Kranl)
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President Obama is battling with lawmakers over federal spending.

No, not the fiscal cliff.

And he’s not even battling Republicans.

The White House is jostling with lawmakers from the states of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut over how much of the tab for Hurricane Sandy relief efforts will be picked up by the feds.

Discussions have been going on for days. The governors of the affected states have requested $82 billion to clean up the storm damages and for infrastructure improvements to prepare for future storms.

White House officials expect Obama to send his proposal to Capitol Hill at the end of this week.

But on Wednesday the New York Times (an authoritative source for White House leaks) reported that Obama’s proposal to Congress will be about $50 billion. A huge amount of money, but not even close to what coast lawmakers have asked for.

The report has provoked disappointed reactions among senators of the affected states calling for more support by the administration. All six senators from the storm-ravaged states are Democrats, as are the vast majority of House members (including 100 percent of the Connecticut delegation).

The White House immediately called the New York Times report “premature speculation” and said the administration is currently working on the storm aid, so there’s no specific number yet.

Also on Wednesday, during a hearing before the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on homeland security, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan repeated the White House’s statement and promised that the administration won’t forget about the damaged coast states.

Referring to the New York Times report, New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand said, “If that is the number, it is inadequate. It will not even go remotely far enough to meet the needs of New York.”

Not to mention Connecticut and New Jersey.

Secretary Donovan did say that the administration’s emergency aid bill will include funding for storm damage prevention, something New York lawmakers have been calling for.

How the bill will be financed — whatever amount it would cover — isn’t clear yet.

On Thursday, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie met with Obama at the White House to talk about the issue. Afterwards, he went to Capitol Hill to assure the coast states’ needs will be heard.

Presidential campaign nears record-shattering $2 billion spending mark

Saturday, November 3, 2012 by:max.kranl@chron.com (Max Kranl)
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2012 has broken all records in presidential fundraising: Never before any candidate has raised and spent as much as in this year’s election campaign. The next milestone: Both candidates are about to hit the $1 billion mark.

According to OpenSecrets, the “red team” – this means Romney, the Republican party and outside spenders – lead the money race having spent over $989 million on campaigning. Obama’s blue team is just little behind: altogether over $928 million.

So, how do these numbers break down?

Mitt Romney has raised $389 million, got an additional $284 million from the party and $369 million from outside spenders, which is the largest portion of his funds.

Barack Obama has raised way more money: $632 million came from his donors. So far, he only spent $540 million of that amount. In addition to that came $263 million from the national party and $124 million from outside spenders.

Romney gets around 80 percent of his money from large individual contributions, while one-third of Obama’s funds come from small individual donations.

We’ll have to wait until after the election to see how much — and how — the campaigns and their Super PAC allies spend in the final days of the campaign.

Media bias? Study finds that Romney has received more favorable coverage than Obama since first debate

Friday, November 2, 2012 by:max.kranl@chron.com (Max Kranl)
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The tone of media coverage of President Obama and Mitt Romney changed dramatically after the first presidential debate, a new study by Pew Research Center has documented.

Before the Denver debate, which voters overwhelmingly believed that Romney won, 22 percent of all stories about Obama had a positive tone, while the ones about Romney were positive only half as often.

Then things changed.

As Romney gained in the polls in the aftermath of the debate, he got substantially more favorable media coverage: 20 percent positive, 50 percent mixed and 30 percent negative. Obama’s coverage suddenly became more negative. Nearly three times as many Obama-related stories had a negative tone than a positive one: 13 percent positive, 51 percent mixed and 36 percent negative.

Overall, however, Obama still has received slightly more favorable coverage this year. The reason, Pew discovered, is that much of the TV coverage of the campaign involved polling and the daily “horse race.” Since Obama led for much of the year, much of the positive coverage reflected his advantage in the polls.

Excluding such horse-race stories, the tone of media coverage was very similar for both candidates, Pew found.

When looking at the different media types, more distinctions become clear. The so-called mainstream media maintained a pretty balanced tone in their coverage, Pew reported. But the tone tended to get more negative with blogs and social media. Facebook and Twitter posts and conversations were particularly negative — with Romney at a big disadvantage there.

Network news viewers received a different narrative about the candidates depending on when they watched. The morning shows on CBS, ABC and NBC set up a tone that favored Romney more. On the evening news shows, though, Obama was better off.

Cable coverage on Fox News was far more negative toward the president than its positive stories. Still, Pew found that MSNBC was even more one-sided: against Romney.

Paul Ryan’s biggest gaffes, lies and misstatements

Thursday, October 11, 2012 by:max.kranl@chron.com (Max Kranl)
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When it comes to gaffes, Paul Ryan is no Joe Biden. But he has managed to develop a reputation as a “serial exaggerator,” typified by his claim that he had run a marathon in less than three hours. Here is a sampling of Ryan missteps:

An unbelievable marathon time

Paul Ryan is a sports-guy, but when he talked about his marathon-time from over 20 years ago he became a little over-ambitious. Ryan said, he took 2 hours 50-something minutes, which obviously is a very good time. However, the records told that his actual time was over 4 hours. He called his error an “honest mistake.” Watch, how he explains his gaffe on CBS.

Errors by the bushel at the Republican convention

Ryan’s speech at the RNC was a gift to fact-checkers. It was so full of lies that even FOX News stepped on the fact-check-train. According to them, Ryan’s speech “was an apparent attempt to set the world record for the greatest number of blatant lies and misrepresentations slipped into a single political speech.” To review his entire speech, click on the video below.

Take away tax shelters

Mitt Romney uses offshore tax shelters like the Cayman Islands. Paul Ryan might have forgotten that when he made the following proposal in the first interview together with Romney on Sixty Minutes: “What we’re saying is take away the tax shelters that are uniquely enjoyed by people in the top tax brackets so they can’t shelter as much money from taxation, should lower tax rates for everybody to make America more competitive.” Romney’s face turned a little shocked, as you can see in the video.

What about these tax loopholes?

The nation is puzzling over Romney/Ryan’s tax plan: they want to balance the tax cuts by reducing tax deductions and eliminating loopholes, but, in fact, they struggle when it comes to explaining which loopholes they will eliminate. Check out this Ryan interview with ABC News.

Showing some muscles

Whether this is a judgment error or a sign of political “strength” is in the eye of the beholder. Today, Time magazine published photos of Ryan in his training outfit and a baseball-cap lifting a huge hantel and demonstratively showing his biceps. The pictures were actually taken 10 months ago, when Ryan was nominated for Time’s “Person of the Year” lineup. As he didn’t make it the photos stayed unused — until now. With tonight’s debate nearing, Time decided to publish them.

Abrupt end of an interview

An interview between Ryan and a Michigan local ABC TV reporter ended with an argument. After the reporter asked a provocative question, Ryan responded, “those are your words, not mine.” Before he could continue, his spokesman interrupted. Watch for yourself!